Henry Cullen, director of studies at St Albans High School for Girls, says he’s no “tech wizard” but found that he could achieve what he needed to do using PowerPoint and its in-build audio commentary function and also found the ‘laser pointer’ facility really useful. Over the summer he also tried using zoom to record videos which worked well in terms of compressing them down and making them easier to share compared to PowerPoint’s bulky files.
He advises that teachers are often working in silos at their own department but it’s really important to have regular meetings with other teachers to share frustrations – everyone’s in the same boat and nobody should be beating themselves up because they are finding something tough and cannot do it perfectly. It’s a strange time and we cannot do everything as ideally as we may like and we need to reassure ourselves and each other that that’s ok.
